


Something Worth Living For

by lyall



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, post 3x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6284962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyall/pseuds/lyall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle is fought, Clarke isn't sure how they go on. Bellamy is broken from his actions, and she knows that no matter what happened, they need each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Worth Living For

When she saw him again, between them stood a thousand ghosts. Some hers, some his, and some shared. She could barely see through the red blood that stained both their hands. The pain in his eyes no doubt mirroring hers. How had they got here? 

Neither said a word and the distance between them remained as they looked across the battlefield. She was fighting the overwhelming instinct to run towards Bellamy and embrace him. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him together, for fear that without that he might fall apart. 

Clarke wondered if he faced the same inner battle that she did. A hand on her arm jolted her from that moment in time, she broke eye contact with Bellamy, and when she looked back, he had gone. She turned to the person who had jolted her back to the presence. 

“He’s changed, Clarke. You know that.” Octavia said, with a cold edge that Clarke had never heard her use towards her brother before. It was to be expected. The pain from losing Lincoln was still fresh on Octavia’s face. It left a scar she would no doubt carry for the rest of her life, and no matter how hard Bellamy had tried to stop it in the end, there was no denying he had been an instrument in the machine that had killed him. 

“I know.” Clarke replied, unable to hide the softness in her voice, “But he is still Bellamy. We have all done things.” At that Octavia stepped away, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“Don’t you dare defend him, Clarke. The evidence of what he has done is right in front of us.” Octavia spread her arms out wide, forcing Clarke to see the bodies that lay scattered on the floor around them. Her heart twisted uncomfortably seeing the bodies of Skicru amongst those of the grounders. Everyone was the same in death. 

“He needs our help, O. It’s over, and whether we like it or not, we remain.” Clarke said, surprised by her own rational thoughts. But she couldn’t find it in herself to hate him for what he had done, even thought she knew she should. How many friends had she lost because he had failed to stop Pike? Even his change of heart towards the end hadn’t saved them. 

“Well you are on your own. I can’t help him. Not yet.” Octavia said, her shoulders pulled back and chin held high. Clarke did not argue back. Octavia would forgive him when she would ready. If that day would ever come, Clarke wasn’t sure. But she was in no place to force it. Instead she nodded, pulling her friend into a hug.

Octavia responded in kind, gripping her fiercely as if it were the last time. 

Clarke pulled back, “May we meet again.”

“May we meet again.” And like that Octavia was gone. Lost among the dead. 

Clarke walked the fields of death for several more hours after that, checking for survivors, but knowing she would find none. Seeing the dead had long since stopped affecting her. The only pang she felt was when she saw Monty crouched on the ground over a body she soon identified as his mother. He had long since stopped crying.

“I know this is her fault, but she was my mother. She was all I had left.”

Clarke spared a few moments of comfort before she moved on. Without realising the direction she was taking, she found herself at the forest edge staring down onto the now mostly destroyed Arkadia. From there, she could spy a single figure walking amongst the rubble. She made to walk to him, but found that her feet would not let her. For now, she would keep her distance. She turned her back and made her way back into the forest.

In the weeks that followed, Clarke barely saw Bellamy. She wasn’t sure if he was avoiding her, or if it were just coincidence. Regardless she did not seek him out. Octavia made brief appearances, and it was in those times that Clarke felt the most at home. When Octavia was gone, she wasn’t sure who she belonged with. She had fought against the Arkadians, so being with them felt wrong, despite what her mother said. And when she was with the Grounders all she could see was them killing her friends, her people. 

But Octavia never stuck around for long. Where she went was anyone’s guess. 

She stood on the darkness one evening when Raven approached her. She could instantly see that Raven know what she was planning. 

“Where will you go?” Raven asked finally.

“I don’t know.” She said, looking at her friend. “I can’t stay here, I just don’t belong anymore.”

“None of us do.” Raven said. Her voice was hard and but full of unspoken emotions. “Do you think that I can bare to look at this place knowing what I almost lost? Do you think Jasper feels like he can live amongst these people? Monty, whose mother was part of all of this?”

Clarke frowned, and opened her mouth to argue but Raven silenced her.

“No. You don’t get to complain about how hard it is to stay here or how much it hurts. I got swept up in the pain, and tried to get rid of it and look what happened!”

Clarke's mind jumped back to when she had found Raven hysterical and losing her mind after realising she could not longer remember Finn. It had been a tough procedure removing the chip, and had almost killed Raven. Some of the others hadn’t survived the operation. 

Raven stepped forward, her hand gripping the back of Clarke’s neck, forcing her to look into her eyes.

“Feelings are all we have to remember those we lost. The only way I remember Finn is by thinking of how much it hurts that he isn’t here anymore. But you know what, I would take that any day over being dead. YOU are still here. Octavia is still here… Bellamy is still here.”

The tears felt hot behind her eyes, threatening to spill over. She didn’t want to feel the guilt and pain anymore. To see her friends, her lover, die in front of her again and again. 

But perhaps wishing that was an insult to those who had died. 

“How do we go forward from here?” She asked, her voice thick with tears. She felt blinded by the pain, like she was stumbling through the darkness. Raven stepped back.

“We find something worth living for.” Raven paused. “He goes to the killing field everyday around sunrise.”

*  
She did not go to find Bellamy the next day. Or the next. Or even the one after that. It was a week later, when she found herself waking up earlier than usual and making her way to the killing field. It was no a conscious choice, but when she realised where she was going, she didn’t stop herself. Her heart yearned to see him, touch him. She would deny that no more. 

He was already there when she got there, stood amongst the dead. His shoulders were slumped and he looked smaller than she had ever seen before. When she got close enough, she lifted a hand and placed it on his softly shoulder.

“Bellamy.” She said softly. He paused, not jumping from the contact making her think that perhaps he did know that she was there. His breathing was heavy and laboured. Saying no more, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek into his back. His hands pressed over her arms as she held onto him.

How long they stayed there, she wasn’t sure. But neither of them spoke or moved for sometime. 

Eventually he turned around, stepping back so Clarke could see him. A cut ran down the side of his face, puckered and pink. His hair stuck to his forehead. 

“What have I done?” He whispered it so softly she barely heard it. 

“What have WE done?” She corrected fiercely, the familiarity of the situation too impossible to ignore. But she wouldn’t make the same mistake he did. She wouldn’t let him leave. The ruins of Arkadia were proof of what happened when they were apart. What had happened to them in those months apart could never happen again. 

Bellamy shook his head, “This one was all me, Princess. I- I should have stopped it. I was there, and I just let Pike carry on and he-he killed Lincoln.” Bellamy’s face crumpled and she could see the realisation dawning on him. She knew that the loss of Octavia would be too much for him to bare. His eyes were wild.

“Octavia, is she- is she-?”

“She’s getting there.” Clarke said simply, elaborating no more. This seemed enough for Bellamy as he closed his eyes, letting the relief visibly wash over him perhaps not realising that Octavia was far from forgiving him. Perhaps knowing that she was alive and coping was all he needed right now. 

“It’s going to be hard.” Clarke said, looking at him. He nodded, his eyes looking pained. “People don’t forgive easily. And there are those who never will. But we must move past this, we cannot let it define us. We have been through so much. But we are going to face our pain, and we will do it together.” Her voice was steady and calm, despite the turmoil she felt inside. Bellamy needed her right now, and she would be there. 

She held out her hand and without hesitation he grasped it, accepting her offer to return to the now ruined Arkadia. 

*

She was right. It was hard, and sometimes she wasn’t sure she was going to make it through. Then she would see Bellamy and know she had to go on, for his sake more than her own. 

They rebuilt Arkadia as best they could, but they didn’t build the walls up again. They stayed down as a promise of peace for the future. 

With many of the living quarters destroyed, people doubled up, and with her mother sharing with Kane, Clarke found herself staying with Bellamy. She knew she would have ended up there eventually even if it had not been forced upon them. It was comfortable and easy. At night they climbed into bed and clung to each other in an attempt to ward off the nightmares. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. 

One night, months after they had started to share a room, something different happened. Clarke was already sat in bed reading when Bellamy finally came in. He hung his guard jacket on a hook on the wall and pulled off his t-shirt. Clarke glanced up from her book, finding her eyes drawn to his bare torso. 

She wasn’t sure how long she had been looking, but it was Bellamy’s small cough that snapped her out of it, bringing her eyes up to his, a blush creeping up to her cheeks.

Then something happened. 

Bellamy smiled. His eyes sparked with mischief and the once familiar cockiness seemed to come to the surface. Her heart swelled at the sight of it, and for a few moments everything else melted away.

“Like what you see Princess?” Bellamy asked, smiling at her all the more broadly. 

She scoffed in a last ditch attempt at preserving face before realising that her cover was blown. She had known this was growing for a very long time, and it had taken a longer time to realise exactly what THIS was. But with Bellamy, her Bellamy, stood in front of her right now, grinning like an idiot like the last few months had never happened, she suddenly knew. 

Realised that resisting was a lost cause, Clarke looked up again meeting his eyes, giving nothing away. She put her book down painfully slowly and rose from the bed. The dumb struck look on Bellamy’s face gave her such satisfaction she knew she would tease him mercilessly for the rest of their lives.

Closing the space between them, she pressed her chest to his bare one, raising her face to look at him. Her hands found his arms, trailing her fingers up and down.

“Maybe.”

And that was all the invitation he needed. Surging forward he pressed his lips to hers, stealing her breath and her heart in one go. His arms snaked around her waist, pulling her flush against him as if he would never let her go. Her hands tangled in his hair, relishing the moment knowing that not matter what happened, they would always have each other.


End file.
